


Thaw

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Background Destiel, Do Not Look For Plot Here, First Kiss, Fluff, Foreground Sabriel, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 15:19:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU after 5x18; Gabriel cheats Death, joins Team Free Will, and saves Sam from an eternity of Hell. Sam doesn’t know how to feel about that. Sabriel, background Destiel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thaw

**Author's Note:**

> And then I Sabriel’ed. Never written any before, just wanted to try my hand at it. There is literally no plot here other than vague mentions of how Gabriel might’ve survived and how Sam didn’t get chucked into Hell; this was really all just an exercise in exploring their dynamic to keep me from suffering over midterms. And because, goddamn it, I miss Gabriel’s smug little face.
> 
> Also, I have a weird thing for Gabriel calling Sam "kiddo". I have no real idea where it came from, but it makes me so happy that I asfjdkl;ajglasjl. So.

It’s raining and windy in South Dakota, and Sam Winchester thinks he’s going to _freeze_ to death.  
  
He didn’t drink as much as the others tonight and maybe that’s why they’re warm and he’s not. The Apocalypse is a big thing to celebrate, for sure, of course, but Sam...Sam just wanted to watch everyone else be. Happy, whole, safe. They sure as hell didn’t get through it unscathed and he still remembers Jo and Ellen like a brand on his soul, but they’ve got survivors. Bobby. Castiel. Even Gabriel.  
  
Even Gabriel.  
  
The short guy--archangel-- _whatever_ \--is sitting on his left, idly sipping a sickly-sweet cocktail that Sam can smell like the haze off a candy factory. It’s pure sugar, and on top of that, bubblegum-pink, but Gabriel’s enjoying it, his amber eyes half-mast, slumped back into the crook of the couch, boots up on Bobby’s shabby coffee table. He looks loose, relaxed, and Sam is anything but--tired, sure, but not the all-out sprawl Gabriel’s got going. If he’s honest, though, Gabriel’s always been like this, casual with a half-smirk hidden at the corner of his mouth like a secret--he never, _ever_ looks out of place. He’s comfortable, everywhere.  
  
And now Dean’s passed out on his angel, snoring loudly, only Castiel’s mild stare keeping the half-empty beer bottle from teetering out of his grasp, and Bobby’s long ago retired to his room, and Sam thinks it’s time to try and get warm under the blankets of the guest room upstairs, even though the cold goes straight to his bones. Truth is, they won, but he’s so tired, feels the weight of it on him like a sleeping pill, and he thinks he might just be happy to sleep for days.  
  
And happy to see his brother with Cas, that’s for damn sure, but at the same time...the picture they make; it’s just so ethereal. Sam imagines the shadow of wings behind the pair of them, Cas’s arm around Dean’s shoulders and a cheek leaned into dark blond hair--the _over-the-top_ love story of the Righteous Man and his guardian angel, wouldn’t _that_ make a good lifetime movie, Sam has frankly been nauseating by all the dancing around each other in circles they’ve done over the last few months, because the eleventh hour is not the time for that.  
  
Gabriel nudges him in the side. Sam jumps. “You’re gross,” the archangel directs at Castiel, who just stares back, his blue gaze unprovoked. “You know that, right? _The Notebook_ has nothing on how sappy the two of you are. Rescues from Hell, dying to protect your beloved, _Falling from Heaven_.” Gabriel snorts and slurps up the last of his drink. “Sam thinks so, too.”  
  
Sam glares, Gabriel smirks, and Cas just smiles, as if he understands that by _gross_ Gabriel means _beautiful._ Sam hates it when Gabriel reads his mind. He’s very much over his adoration-of-angels phase, especially since one of them recently dressed up as his dead girlfriend and the rest of them consider him an abomination, like a spider they ought to have squashed under their squeaky shoes. All angels are dicks, Castiel being the only exception, and Gabriel--well, Gabriel doesn’t even count. Half the time Sam still calls him _Trickster_ in his head, sometimes even out loud, because a thousand years of paganism just doesn’t wear off that easy. The lack of suit can attest to that.  
  
He sees Gabriel’s smirk hitch a bit out of the corner of his eye and thinks, venomously, that it serves him right, prying into people’s thoughts like that. And it’d be easier to _think_ if Gabriel wasn’t endlessly side-eyeing him with his x-ray vision, so he stands up with the intention of turning in.  
  
“It _is_ kinda gross,” he says, reluctantly, because he can’t help but get a jab in.  
  
Dean opens a bleary eye. “Shuddup, Sam.”  
  
“Go back to sleep, _angel breath_.” Dean huffs, turns his face into Cas’s neck, and Sam turns away, doesn’t even nod to Gabriel before heading for the stairs and the spare room with the buckled mattress waiting for him. He yawns, cracking his jaw so wide open that it threatens to split him in half, and takes a swig of the beer he carried up with him, tries not to think too hard about the war they won.  
  
It was a fluke. If flukes were named after snide, charming, manipulative, cunning, _abrasive_ archangels-turned-pagan-gods. The kind that bickered with their angel brethren in the backseat of Dean’s Impala, the kind that cheated Death only because he’d spent the last millenium as a Trickster, the kind that tried to derail Sam’s boring salad-and-chicken eating habits with desserts stolen from the finest establishments all over the world. Sam grumbles under his breath and yanks off his boots, and at least the stupid Christian-pagan-deity hybrid isn’t side-eyeing him up here, because he doesn’t think he can take it.  
  
He was supposed to be in The Box by now.  
  
He sits down on the edge of the bed and drops his face into his hands, rubbing at his eyes until there are bright specks of color in the field of black. He _loathes_ Gabriel. At least, he’s trying to. It’s hard, though, when the guy’s actually been useful lately, nutting up and helping them carry out their grand avert-the-Apocalypse plan, and man, an archangel with Grace intact is a _good fucking thing_ to have on your side in a situation like that. And, in spite of himself, he _likes_ Gabriel. His over-the-top theatrics, terrible jokes, awful candy habit, sharp constant sarcasm, the stupid petulant eye-rolls, the way he baits Dean so expertly, like he’s been doing it for years.  
  
Well. Technically speaking, he has.  
  
But Sam never expected the asshole to go toe-to-toe with Lucifer. Not again, not after nearly getting the ax from the Morningstar the first time around. Sam still feels a little raw on the inside from having all that Fallen archangel burning up inside him, and he’s still not quite sure how Gabriel got the damn thing out or gave it a good shove into Hell or how he’s not crashing hard from demon blood withdrawal right now but he’s _angry_ about it all, because _he was supposed to be in The Box by now._  
  
Maybe it’s a hallucination. Maybe he _is_ in Hell, and Lucifer’s giving him pretty things just to torture him when he rips them away later. He wonders when he’ll find out for sure, and wonders what it says about him that Gabriel--that short, smug little _fucker_ \--was his savior in this...potential fantasy hallucination Hell Box.  
  
And he’s still cold, rain lashing against the windows. Well, that fits with the Devil theory, anyway, but Sam doesn’t really believe that he’s downstairs, even if it _is_ the right temperature for Lucifer. That’s just the weather being ironic, as if to say that the Devil’s gone but not forgotten. Sam snorts, picks his head up out of his hands, rests his elbows on his knees. He doesn’t even want the beer at his feet.  
  
He doesn’t know what he wants.  
  
He thinks he wants an archangel, and that’s about as masochistic as you can get, especially with _this_ archangel. Gabriel’s good company, a complainer but a good hand with research, has a way of making their whole dire lifestyle--given even more weight by Castiel’s continuous head-tilting and somber staring--a little bit lighter, and Sam likes him for that, but he’s pretty sure Gabriel’s just fucking with him when...when he’s palling around with Sam. And Sam...Sam’s felt something less like pity and more like sympathy, more like _empathy_ for Gabriel since they first got him in that ring of holy fire and learned what he was. Sam tried to run away from home a few times, too, after all.  
  
He’s pretty sure that Gabriel saved him just because he could, not because Gabriel likes him, or anything.  
  
“Deep thoughts, kiddo.”  
  
Sam almost jumps out of his skin. “Jesus,” he spits out. “Don’t do that.”  
  
Gabriel emerges from a shadowy corner, a frown on his usually light-hearted features. “Should be saying the same to you,” he comments, taking a sip of what smells like pear cider in an ice-cold glass. “Your guilt has a really metallic scent. Kind of like pennies.” He wrinkles his nose.  
  
“Maybe if you stopped reading my mind--”  
  
“Sammy, this one’s not thanks to my _x-ray vision_.” Gabriel air-quotes around that one with one hand, and Sam looks away from him, exasperated. “It’s a vibe. Human thing. Not mind-reading thing.”  
  
“You shouldn’t have saved me,” Sam mutters, and he gets up, because it’s better standing up in a room with an archangel, and it helps that he dwarfs Gabriel by a good amount.  
  
Gabriel raises his eyebrows at that. “What, you’d rather be batted around by Michael and Lucifer for eternity? Trust me, Sammy, you _don’t_ want to be their chew toy.”  
  
“It was supposed to be penance,” Sam grinds out, and hates that he’s bothering to explain himself to the fucking _Trickster_ , for crying out loud. “Not that you understand that, or anything.”  
  
Gabriel’s eyes flash, briefly, and they’re more gold than amber; Sam glimpses the cold, ancient being wrapped up in the guise of a man and takes an involuntary step back before he stops himself.  
  
“What do you think this was?” Gabriel asks, his voice calm with an edge of _duh, kid_. “I didn’t join your little team for fun, Sam. A thousand years of paganism doesn’t just _wear off_.”  
  
“I didn’t offer to be your _penance_ ,” Sam snaps.  
  
“So that’s what this is about, huh,” he muses, and the pear cider disappears from his hand. “I interrupted your little swan dive, and you’re pissed that you didn’t get to save the world.”  
  
“You think it’s that?” Sam explodes. “You think I wanted the _glory_? I wanted the fucking _redemption_ , Gabriel. I’ve done too much to still be walking around, a free man--”  
  
“Kiddo,” Gabriel says, almost gently. “You’re only human.”  
  
Sam stares down at him, his anger grinding to a halt in his throat at the soft sadness in Gabriel’s eyes.  
  
“You and Dean,” Gabriel comments, taking a step closer. “You cheat Death a lot. Maybe more than you even know. But you couldn’t have cheated this one. It would have just been the box, and Lucifer, forever--or until some of my more zealous brothers decided to get The Apocalypse up and kicking again. Either way, though, it would have killed you, really killed you _dead_ this time. I couldn’t let you, Sam. Your road to Hell was paved with the best intentions, and Dad’s not around to _nitpick_ the reasons and outcomes anymore, so let it go.” Gabriel smiles, and it’s small and sad. “You didn’t even have a chance. They painted you into Lucifer’s role millennia ago.”  
  
“What are you saying?” Sam demands, and his hands are shaking.  
  
“I’m saying you did everything you could to turn their plan for you inside out, so maybe you should give yourself a break.” Gabriel gestures out to the thunderstorm carrying on outside. “World’s still turnin’, your nearest and dearest are safe and sound. All’s well that ends well, right? What more could you want?”  
  
 _You_ , Sam thinks; it breaks inside him in a rush that’s dizzying, disorienting. _I want you._ But Gabriel, tarnished as he is, will never have him; he’s still the power and the glory and Sam is an _abomination_ , and Sam doesn’t even know why he wants, except he does. Maybe it’s because Gabriel’s always given him a fighting chance, even in his cruellest moments, tried to help him out; it was never mindless fun and games. It was mercy, and that’s something people have failed to give him, over and over again.  
  
Gabriel’s eyes have gone liquid, golden, and Sam looks away. “Sammy,” he says, his voice uncertain, but Sam just shivers, because he’s still so damn cold. Only Dean ever calls him that.  
  
“I’m just,” he says, turning his back on Gabriel. “I’m tired, okay? Lucifer’s not really a party to have riding shotgun, and it’s fucking freezing, and I’m going to sleep.” Without even thinking about it, he shucks his jeans down over his legs, because he can’t remember the last time he had the luxury of sleeping without pants, and then he crawls into bed, under the many layers of threadbare quilts, shivering at the cool sheets.  
  
There’s a hesitation, a moment when he thinks Gabriel might have left without a word, but then the mattress dips and something warm insinuates itself against his chest, tangles its feet between his legs. He makes a noise of surprise and jerks back, but Gabriel holds him still, too much strength in his arms like iron bars to be just human.  
  
“It’s an after-effect,” the archangel says, his voice a puff of warmth against Sam’s t-shirt. “Lucifer runs cold, so it was either that or let you miss the afterparty while you came down from demon blood withdrawals.”  
  
Sam snorts, tilts his chin down to look at the crown of golden-blond hair. Gabriel tips his head back to look back at him. “So, what, your solution was to _cuddle_?”  
  
Gabriel smirks, bright and easy. “You can’t deny the effectiveness of body heat.”  
  
And Sam’s too cold, too tired, to pull away, even if the closeness is something he shouldn’t be letting happen, but Gabriel is _inhumanly_ warm against him, a fleshy, pushy, comfortable space heater so he gives up, gives in, lets his muscles fall loose into the mattress and wraps an arm around Gabriel’s back, warming his fingers with a palm splayed out against shoulder blades. He imagines wings as Gabriel clears his throat, a little noise of surprise.  
  
“It’s temporary,” Gabriel mentions. “Should wear off by morning.”  
  
And then, Gabriel will be gone. Sam closes his eyes. Why would he stay? He’s got a Heaven to keep in order, a home to go to, and no more Apocalypse to avert. He doesn’t _need_ them. He’s done his time, been in exile long enough. It’ll be back to him and Dean and Cas, and there’ll be an empty seat in the Impala burning a hole just behind him, and he’ll just have to shut up and deal with it, life post-Apocalypse, without Gabriel.  
  
God, this has gotten ridiculous. He can’t even imagine _life_ without the ass of an archangel flicking his ear during long car rides.  
  
“You know why I read your mind so much?” Gabriel sounds frustrated; Sam doesn’t open his eyes. “Because you’re fucking _loud_. You’re the loudest damn human I’ve ever heard. Your thoughts are horribly coherent and, incidentally, make me want to bash your head into a wall.”  
  
Sam flinches, and then fingertips touch his jaw, and he cringes again, back from the contact. “Not for that,” Gabriel says, his voice almost soft. “Never for that. What I specifically _overhear_ is...unimportant. I’m not trying--hard as that may be to believe--to make you uncomfortable. It’s not a conscious effort. Your thoughts are your own, so I try to act like I don’t hear them.” Sam snorts, disbelieving. “Well,” Gabriel amends, “except in the interest of making my baby bro uncomfortable. You understand. Your actions...that’s what I put real stock in. What you _will_ , not whatever errant thought crosses your mind.”  
  
Sam hesitates over this, thinking, and Gabriel’s hand is a steady, still warmth against his skin, almost reassuring. Gabriel is almost a lot of things. “Are you going back to Heaven?” he asks finally, because it would be good to know.  
  
Gabriel huffs, a soft chuckle. “Not indefinitely. I ran away for a reason. I don’t like Heaven.”  
  
“You realize that’s a terrifically bizarre thing to say, right?” Sam comments, cracking one eyelid open.  
  
“It’s true, though. I only need to go back to keep Raphael in line, come up with a fitting distraction once in a while. He’s a real power-grabber.”  
  
Sam thinks for another handful of seconds, then carefully tightens his arm around Gabriel, just a little, molding the warmth closer to him. “What’ll you make him do? It better be horrible.”  
  
Gabriel snorts. His thumb’s smoothing over Sam’s jaw now, hypnotic, golden eyes tilted up to keep his gaze steady on Sam. “I’ve got a few ideas, kiddo. He was always my least favorite.”  
  
Sam’s the only one Gabriel calls _kiddo_. He used to think it was condescending, glared every time he heard it, while Cas tilted his head and Dean snickered at his humiliation, but now he thinks it might be an expression of endearment. Sam sort of likes it, the softness of the syllables, the way they’re protective, caring. Almost. Things he didn’t think would apply to Gabriel, but do, somehow.  
  
“It’s not home,” Gabriel comments, almost neutrally, but there’s a hint of loss in its flatness. “I’ll check in, throw a bone to Raphael, get the hell out of dodge. Plenty of better places to be.”  
  
 _But not here_ , Sam thinks. Anywhere--Gabriel can go anywhere--but he won’t come back here. What is there for him, anyway, besides a few broken humans and an equally broken brother? He’s not _family_ , as much as it feels like he is, probably sees them all as pets, attached enough, sure, but not going to forego his freedom for them.  
  
“Go to sleep,” Gabriel says, quiet. He’s taken his hand back; it rests lightly on Sam’s shoulder instead.  
  
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Sam mutters, and because he might only have right now to do it, because it’s insane but he’ll miss the stupid, smug little asshole, he tips his head down to press his lips to Gabriel’s.  
  
Gabriel stills, for just a split second, frozen and stiff, and then he melts, deeper than before, against Sam’s chest and his lips give, soft under Sam’s mouth. Sam moves, shifts, gets Gabriel beneath him and kiss him into the mattress, tasting the sweet, crisp cider still on the archangel’s lips. Gabriel makes a noise like a whine and presses Sam’s lips apart with his tongue, licking into his mouth and then Sam feels the real _heat_ of Gabriel, the archangel under the man, all light and complications, and Sam burrows down into him, pushes against all that warmth and shudders against the hand curling into the hair at the nape of his neck, against fingers pressing hard enough to bruise into his hip.  
  
There’s a beat where they’re a breath apart, and then Gabriel says, with a valiant attempt at his usual snark, considering his position pinned under Sam, “Is this a thin-line-between-love-and-hate thing, or a you-saved-my-ass-and-I’m-grateful thing?”  
  
“Just stay,” Sam says, his mouth moving into the crook of Gabriel’s neck, muttering against skin. “You arrogant bastard.”  
  
“Where else would I go, kiddo?” Gabriel asks, for once genuine, no hint of sarcasm, hand smoothing down Sam’s hair in a gesture almost like comfort, and when Sam kisses him again he stops feeling cold.


End file.
